President Maia Sandu’s Address at the Connectivity Platform Meeting

Commissioner Kos, Prime Minister, ministers,

Dear guests, welcome to Moldova.

If our continent has learned one lesson, it is that peace is built on connection. The European Union began with coal and steel shared between former enemies, and it grew into a single market, a connected grid, one roaming zone. 

Countries whose power lines, roads and cables run into each other have a stake in each other’s peace. Alone, even the strong are vulnerable. Together and connected, even the small are more secure.

Russia’s war against Ukraine has redrawn the routes between Europe and Asia, for goods and for data alike. The corridor through the Black Sea, the Caucasus, the Caspian and Central Asia is now Europe’s way east, for containers and for data. 

“Trusted” is the word that matters in this Platform: who builds the networks matters as much as where they run. Trusted also means secure: routes by land, by sea and by satellite, so that no single attack and no single supplier can cut a country off. 

I welcome the offer Commissioner Kos will present today, one of the most ambitious connectivity undertakings Europe has launched in years, and a necessary one.

Moldova sits at the western end of that corridor, where it enters the European Union. We have two neighbours: Romania, a member of the European Union, and Ukraine. For us, connectivity means being well connected to both. 

Whatever you build here reaches both markets: the European Union today, and Ukraine when the time comes to rebuild. That makes Moldova the country that already works by Europe’s rules, shares a border with Ukraine, and delivers what it promises, under some very hard conditions for a small country.

Let me give you three proofs.

The first. For thirty years every pipeline and every power line in Moldova ran east, to one supplier, controlled from one capital. Everyone here understands now what that meant: when your only supplier does not share your values, your supplier owns your winter. 

Governments before us knew it too, and did very little to fix this. We acted, with the war already raging next door. In the run-up to the winter of 2022 that supply was used against us. Within two years we went from one hundred percent Russian gas to zero. 

Our grid now runs in sync with Europe’s. The first of three high-voltage lines to Romania is about to enter service; the second is contracted and the third has its financing in place. A new line to Ukraine is in planning. Renewables have gone from 3% of our electricity to 30% in just five years.

We are a small country; we know we have to work harder and move faster than most, and we do.

The second proof is that, in daily life, Moldova is already part of Europe. A Moldovan phone in Europe or a European phone in Moldova works at home rates thanks to “Rome like at home”. 

A Moldovan bank account moves euros like any account in Frankfurt or Riga, thanks to our participation in the Single Euro Payments Area. 

We align our laws with the EU chapter by chapter, and the Commission’s enlargement report, published last week, confirms the pace, our dedication and our progress. Our aim is to have the country ready for membership by the end of this decade. What one builds in Moldova today will stand inside the Union in a few years’ time.

The third proof is that any road or line that connects Europe to Moldova also connects Europe to Ukraine. Romania’s Union Motorway, the A8, will eventually reach our border, and we intend to carry it on to Chișinău and to Odesa. 

In September, Greece, Bulgaria and Romania signed a plan for a new road and rail corridor from the Aegean to the Black Sea and the Danube, reaching Ungheni on our border; Moldova and Ukraine are its natural continuation. Together with the European Union, the European Investment Bank and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, we invest in roads that connect to the Trans-European Transport Network.

These routes already work both ways. Ukrainian grain crosses Moldova to Constanța when its own access to the Black Sea is unsafe. Gas and electricity can reach Ukraine through us too. 

Chișinău airport has become a vital point of connection for the many people travelling to Odesa and other neighbouring regions of Ukraine.

All that makes Moldova the hub between the two, today for transit and tomorrow for reconstruction, where the companies already based here will be first in line. And the people here speak the languages of the whole region: Romanian, English, Russian, Ukrainian, Bulgarian and Gagauz, a Turkic language any guest from Türkiye will understand.

That is the offer.

But I also have a concern to share. Everything we connect, we also have to protect. Across Europe, artificial intelligence is now devising and running cyberattacks faster and cheaper than any human team, against grids, banks, hospitals and the very institutions meant to protect us. 

So I propose that connectivity should also mean connecting expertise. Attacks should be reported among like-minded countries, because an attack on one of us is a rehearsal for the next. And response should travel as fast as the attack: cybersecurity ambulances, rapid-response teams for countries that cannot keep such teams on standby themselves.

Ladies and gentlemen,

Back to building. Whatever you choose to build, invest in or finance in Moldova, you do so in a country that knows the price of isolation and has chosen connection, Europe and peace.

Thank you.